


The Space Between Dad and Son

by Pigeonsplotinsecrecy



Series: Lone Star Past [4]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Complex relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Gen, Owen Strand's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:06:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy/pseuds/Pigeonsplotinsecrecy
Summary: T.K. wants to fill the space between him and his dad.
Series: Lone Star Past [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117163
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	The Space Between Dad and Son

The space between dead and gone is thin and shallow. It's the line between the blazing fire and the cooling ash. It's a lonely cavern that leaves you with none of what you want but all the heavy hopes that come with the thought of what you could have. It is the tenuous separation between permanency and uncertainty, the not knowing whether to push yourself further or to give in to the end. It is the feeling of emptiness when you clutch onto the last thread of what you cherish as it unravels and turns into a pile of yarn that you don’t recognize anymore.

T.K. first crawled into that space on September 11, 2001, when he waited for his dad to get home in the long hours that the phones were too busy to get a call through. Even when the phone lines cleared, Owen was too busy to answer a call. _Maybe he didn’t want to._ As T.K. wondered if he would ever see his dad again, he felt the absence already forming in his core, and it wasn’t the usual kind of absence that T.K. felt when his Dad wasn’t there. It was a disconnect, a doubt that Owen was out there at all. His dad wasn’t just gone; he was maybe dead. It would be hours before T.K. would know one way or the other. Those hours were slow, and he didn’t understand death still, but he knew 9/11 was the end of something. He prayed to whatever was out there that his dad would get back soon, and promised he would give up anything just for one wish.

When he was in the space, a too little space even for a little boy, T.K. yearned to sit on his father’s lap like he’d sworn off doing when he was six after a second grader had told him that only babies did that. When Owen finally did get home, T.K. had fallen asleep on the couch after staying up all night despite his mom trying to steer him to bed. Even with exhaustion pulling down his body, Owen picked T.K. up and tucked him into his parents’ big bed between them. T.K. was too drowsy to notice much more than that he felt the childish sense of safety for the last time. Nestled between his parents, he felt warm, but by the time the next few weeks came, he’d be a neutral zone between the two people who were supposed to keep them safe, but they couldn’t even protect him from the battle that had entered his own home.

His parents started fighting— nonstop. They asked him to choose sides, and he’d choose the side of whoever seemed to be the loser because that was the person who most needed his support. He realized that he was the loser. He walked on unsteady ground, on a tightrope walk between the egos of the two people he loved the most. They made up some days, and T.K. felt relief, but something would happen, and the balancing act would resume. T.K. never knew what to expect. He wanted his parents to make up their minds whether they liked each other or not. The more they fought, the more T.K. felt like he had vanished; the more he wanted to vanish because it wasn’t fun to exist in that space, the one where his family wasn’t dead, but it was gone. T.K. knew even then that they would never be the same. He would never be the same. Owen moved out, he worked more, and T.K. tried to be satisfied with fleeting visits.

The space didn’t get bigger as T.K. gets older, and he had to contort his body to stay there. He had to force his feelings into boxes and shut them down. When he felt angry at his dad for not being home to tuck him in, he told himself, _At least he isn’t dead, not like the fourteen others._ When he felt sad about his father not showing up to his school play, he told himself, _At least he isn’t dead, not like the fourteen others._ When he expressed his concern to his mother, she gave him a look that said, _At least he isn’t dead, not like the fourteen others._ He learned that fourteen dead men would always come first to Owen because Owen was in the space between dead and gone too, the lone survivor of his crew, and he came being the ghost of the father he once was. By the time he was fifteen, Owen was gone more than half his life, still alive but out of T.K.’s reach.

T.K. started feeling nothing because he couldn’t feel without the space pressing on his ribs, but he missed all the good feelings that came with feeling. He started drinking, and it made him forget the worries he had of being unlovable. His friends loved him when he was drunk. They cheered him on, and they pushed red cups towards him. They’d dare him to do embarrassing things, and he’d do it because he liked when people paid attention. He didn’t remember half of what he did anyway, so what was so wrong about giving himself a few moments of belonging? T.K. started getting high when a friend brought a baggie of pain meds that he’d swiped from his mom, and all pressure squeezing his body seemed to vanish. He only felt alive when he was high, and then, the doubts and self-hatred would creep back in with sobriety, and he’d decide that it was time to kill the part of himself that carried any pain. T.K. wasn’t dead, but he was gone, and oh, how he loved being gone.

It took 3 relapses for T.K. to get sober, but he focused on the one thing he wanted most— to become a firefighter. He wouldn’t admit to himself that the one thing he really wanted was a dad. He thought that by being a firefighter, he could force the connection he wanted, but all that happened was that Owen didn’t have to even try to ask about T.K.’s life anymore because T.K.’s whole life became being a firefighter. T.K. had thrown himself into the space that kept him and Owen apart, but being in the space didn’t close it.

Most days, T.K. counted himself lucky, _At least he isn’t dead, not like the fourteen others_ , but he still hovered in that space that drove a wedge in their relationship. T.K. used to think that Owen was a hero who could never do wrong. Crammed in the space, he didn’t want to let that image go. He wanted the hero to live, even if feelings of security and love dwindled. T.K. still wanted to believe in the hero, but there was a part of him that knew that the hero never existed. Owen was only a man, and T.K. was still making sense of who that man was after so many years.

T.K. wanted that lost connection. The hugs, the father-son chats, the hours of working and living together meant nothing if Owen still didn’t understand the claustrophobic fears that T.K. carried ever since 2001 when the dad T.K. knew left and never came back. T.K. still hoped that his dad would stop being gone, but the space between father and son is a mountain crammed into a thimble. It is the scars that make T.K. never feel important enough and the memories that undermine the reassurances on the contrary. It is all the conversations they cannot have because the father T.K. had before 9/11 is lost in the smoke. It is all the moments that T.K. will never have with his dad because time doesn’t stop when you’re not present to keep it. It is the childish want of being pulled out of the space and into a warm embrace


End file.
